Now that it’s back to school time, many parents are making the decision to arm their children with cell phones. With more and more younger children carrying a mobile phone, cell phone safety for kids is more important than ever before. As parents we choose to give our kids cell phones to keep them safe. It’s important that our children can reach us, in case of an emergency. Unfortunately, having their own cell phone can also pose some risks for kids.
It’s important to establish some ground rules when giving your child a cell phone. These are some of the rules that have been established in our household.
Educate
Establish that the purpose of the cell phone is for emergencies. Especially for younger children this is important to reinforce.
With older kids, discuss the dangers involved with texting and driving. Also discuss sexting and cyberbullying. Ask your kids to share with you any text messages they receive that might be inappropriate.
Don’t talk to strangers. Instruct your child not to answer calls or text messages from numbers they don’t recognize. If it’s important, the caller will leave a message.
Limit usage. Designate specific times when cell phone usage is allowed. Don’t let cell phones interrupt family time. Make it a rule that all phones are turned off at dinner time and bed time.
Use the Phone for Good
Encourage your children to use their cell phone to do things like doing the math when you are shopping. Research answers that come in homework or during conversation. Use the pone to learn. There are many great educational apps available from the Apple Store and Google Play that will teach your kids while they are having fun.
Choose the Right Features and Use Parental Controls
If your child is younger, they don’t need access to social media. Look for a phone that does not have a built in web browser or video messaging.
Monitor your child’s phone for inappropriate texts or messages. If your child’s phone has access to the internet be sure that some type of parental control service is in place. Many cellular providers offer these services.
Consider monitoring services such as built in GPS that lets you know where your child is at all times.
Kajeet™ the Smart Phone for Kids
kajeet™ is the only prepaid wireless service that meets the needs and concerns of kids and parents. kajeet™ phones come installed with free parental controls. Parents can manage their kids cell phone usage by limiting their child’s texting, picture messaging and websites accessed via the cell phone. Also manage what phone numbers, calls, and texts can be made to and received from the phone.
All kajeet™ phones are installed with a GPS Locator, allowing parents to locate a lost phone or get daily emails with the phones location.
kajeet™ also allows parents to control the time of day that the phone is used. If bed time is at 8:00, you can set the phone to automatically lock until a designated time to come back on.
An easy to use online interface allows parents to easily manage all parental controls.
There are no contracts or cancellation fees. If your child is being punished and is not allowed to use their phone, you don’t have to pay for it while it’s not in use.
kajeet™ has really thought of everything in terms of cell phone safety for kids and affordability. To learn more visit the kajeet™ web site. Use Promo Code BACK2SCHOOL to save 15% off your purchase.
kajeet™ is a great cell phone solution for parents who, like me, want to stay connected, know where their kids are, and keep them safe online.
Learn more about all that kajeet™ has to offer by watching this short video.
This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of kajeet. The opinions and text are all mine.
Great tips! So important:) And I’ll definitely have to check out kajeet!
Thats so cool how there’s an time to shut it down and it won’t turn back on until afterwards.
That is pretty neat! My son is only 7 and already begging for a cell phone. I think he’s too young still, but when the time come I want something that I can have complete control over.
When my daughter is old enough for a cell phone, I will have to check into this. Great ideas! Thank you for sharing with us parents. I appreciate it.
This is great to know. My oldest is 9 and I know this isn’t far off in the future for him.
Those are great tips. The husband and I are still undecided just when our kids will actually get their first cell phones, but it probably won’t be until they are teenagers, and then it won’t have free access…definitely it will have parental controls and limited minutes that they can’t go over even if they wanted to.